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At the science communications workshop held by the Delta Stewardship Council today in Sacramento, I had a chance to speak to postdocs and graduate students about how social media tools can benefit a research career. You can read my notes in my recent post, Social Media: A Virtual “School of Athens” for Researchers.
Afterwards, Dr. Lauren Hastings, deputy executive officer for the council, said it would be great to see a visualization of how social media tools like Twitter can amplify messages and reach.
So I tinkered a bit with some of the retweets that came as a result of the “School of Athens” blogpost, and created this snapshot of how the link traveled around the globe:
CLICK FOR FULL SIZE GRAPHIC
You can download the graphic as a JPG file or as a PDF file.
Basically, by tweeting the link of my blogpost, I was able to share my message with networks outside of my own. My link was shared by Bora Zivkovic, whose network is immense. And in turn, the link was shared by Twitter users in Greece, Germany, Belgium and throughout the United States.
My follows on Twitter are mostly people in the science blogging circles, and when I was scrolling through my Twitter feed last Friday morning, I noticed a lot of people talking about the hashtag #sciencegirlthing.
Well, that’s not quite right — it sounded like women and men all over the Twittersphere had found the New Great Evil Against Science and were halfway through a public stoning.
So I clicked the link and watched the video:
My immediate reaction was a little laughter — especially when I saw the E.U. logo pop up in the end. I thought to myself, “Ha! Of course this had to be European.” The trailer, designed for a European Union science outreach campaign called “Science: It’s a girl thing”, had the kitch of a Mentos commercial and the gloss of a Spice Girls music video (admit it, you remember them) and that effortless continental chic.
Those Awkward Teenage Years
Over the past few days, the video has been slammed throughout the web for fostering stereotypes, sexist clichés, Hollywood glitz, et cetera. Many commented how this was a terrible way to encourage teenage girls into scientific careers, and how instead of catering to popular stereotypes, people should focus on highlighting the excitement and wonder of science and research.
But you know what I was worried about when I was 13 years old?
Girls, and whether they liked me. And being envious of the good-looking popular kids.
Not science or careers.
Scan and deliver. (Image credit: Wikipedia)
Have you ever wanted to tweet the link to an awesome article you just read?
Great and easy if you’re on reading on the Web, but what if you’re reading from a print magazine or newspaper?
Now you gotta get up from your chair to go to your computer (if you’re near it)… go look up the rag’s website… search for the article… copy the URL… shorten the URL… and zzzzzzzz….
I was reading TIME magazine’s list of “The 50 Worst Inventions,” which included ideas from the the Segway to Venetian-blind sunglasses. But the list also included the CueCat, the personal bar code scanner that was distributed through magazines like Forbes and Wired in the 1990′s enticing readers to look up companies featured in printed ads:
Millions of the cat-shaped bar-code scanners were produced and shipped for free across the U.S., in hopes that people would use them to scan specially marked bar codes to visit Internet sites. (How this was easier than a typing a link, the company never did answer.)
So, the CueCat went extinct. But why couldn’t that concept work today – for tweeting and social bookmarking?
For every print article you publish, you can print a tiny bar code or QR code of a shortened URL to the online version of that article. A reader can photograph this code with their smart phone camera.
Then, you modify a smart phone Twitter client (HootSuite, Echofon, etc.) to photograph and read these codes, then unwraps the shortened URL and inserts it into the message to be tweeted (not unlike this example of a QR code billboard). Or, modify bookmarking apps for Digg or del.icio.us to read these codes and add the article URL directly to your collection.
The benefits of code scanning, then, isn’t limited to driving more ad traffic or quick searches.
Coincidentally, a PC World article on May 28 reported on that the Microsoft Tag service is no longer in beta. The website lets users create an inventory of QR codes for their own website pages.
Anyone willing to give this a shot?
Hear me out on this idea.
Many of us have become Facebook or Twitter DJs with the rise of Blip.fm — the social media platform that let’s you play musical selections from existing clouds of MP3 and YouTube files — perhaps unwittingly outing our inner Madonna fetish or honky tonk groove (and no, I only have one of these two).
Following other users’ “blips” is not unlike following tweets, except each 150 character message can also play a song track. Follow enough people, and you’ve got an eclectic, continuous music stream to keep your work day going.
What the cuss does this have to do with science podcasts?
Simple. While Blip.fm gets a lot of its song files from public databases, it also pulls music videos from YouTube. In fact, any user can submit YouTube links to Blip.fm, adding that track to the cloud of playable songs in the Blip.fm universe. (The video itself is viewable on that user’s Blip screen.)
Now think of all those narrated slideshows, lunch talks, and documentary shorts you’ve already uploaded somewhere on the ‘Tube. Submit these links to Blip, then search for and play them on your Blip.fm station, and you’ll have set up your own science podcast stream. For good measure, why not mix in a few science related songs, be it clichéd or sublime.
Granted, this will probably make you not very popular to Blip DJs who are there to listen to tunes, not talk. But if there were enough science DJs on Blip and you advertised your presence, you might attract a decent following of people looking for stimulating, educational chatter. Imagine flipping on Blip before prepping that family dinner or pipetting another bunch of trays, and discovering that unexpected astronomy podcast or surprising recycling lecture — all without setting up your iPod.
Has anyone brought up this idea before? What other social music service might be even better for streaming podcasts? Could science podcasts ever invade Pandora? Or am I overthinking this and there are easier ways to socially stream podcasts (hmm, like YouTube on continuous play?)?
Please lend your thoughts in the comments!
